HOULTON, Maine — Kristen and David Wells, guests of Rotarian Martine McCluskey, joined the Houlton Rotary Club Aug. 17 for an online meeting and talked to us about their new business venture.
The Wells are the proprietors of the Vault Restaurant, located in downtown Houlton. Prior to opening the restaurant, Kristen’s work included contracting locally with projects and marketing, while David is a musician by trade and has worked with music programs at several schools and Universities.
Kristen grew up in the local area and they came to Houlton about seven years ago to visit family. The couple made the decision to return to the area. David had some experience cooking for the local Co-Op and for family and extended family. He grew up in California and was exposed to a variety of different cuisines.
In between breaks with school, he worked in the food industry. One of their favorite restaurants in town when they came to visit was The Vault and when the opportunity came up, they purchased the building with the vision of running the restaurant. After purchasing the building they worked to re-open The Vault under their ownership and got it up and running in February, 2020 right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and shut the dining room down.
After getting up and running and working through all aspects of opening a new restaurant, they only had a couple of weeks and then they quickly had to shift gears and prepare for serving customers with only being able to offer to-go and delivery orders since dining rooms in restaurants were shut down.
Their menu wasn’t initially designed as “to-go” and was geared more towards dine-in, date night, come relax at our restaurant and enjoy the company you’re with, in mind. When they opened the restaurant, they wanted some old favorites from when the restaurant was run by previous owners, as well as some flavors of their own.
Faced with new challenges due to COVID-19, they worked with staff on how to best accomplish the new mission. Everything had to be reconfigured to work outside their original business model.
With many other goals pushed aside, their immediate goal became to “break even” and just get through this time. They are very appreciative of their staff and the local community for the support during their opening and several transitions due to mandates by the State.
As they talked through some of their challenges, they had to work through and determine how much they could successfully handle in one night due to limited resources, including space. They realized limitations and made changes accordingly. Some of the changes included more prep work ahead of the busy order times and streamlining processes as much as they could for efficiency.
All while doing this with their new restaurant, with school changes, they had four children at home trying to learn remotely. This was also a game-changer and they had to rely on staff more to help them at the restaurant so they could also ensure their children were being educated and didn’t fall behind in school. This meant waitstaff would help by doing prep work at the beginning of the week which is not how the position was originally envisioned, but luckily staff at the restaurant have been very adaptable.
When limited seating was allowable, they again had to reconfigure how they would be able to do take-out orders while they also had dine-in customers. Their concerns with re-opening were keeping customers and employees safe and taking into account airflow and spacing. They have always been conscious of sanitizing and this wasn’t much of a change for them.
One of the biggest challenges has been keeping up with supply and demand and knowing what the right amount is to purchase each week. They also ran into suppliers who had shut down due to COVID-19 or ran into issues with transportation of the items getting to them. The cost of meat also increased and some only became available in wholesale, which was unexpected.
It has been a juggling act the whole time since they opened in February and there have been many ups and downs and adjusting. July has been a more consistent month. They are very appreciative of their staff and family who has been there right beside them and working through all of the changes since February.
The couple said they have a passion for food and our local community, which is what has motivated them during these unprecedented times. They enjoy seeing customers happy.
As far as the numbers, they invested in a Point of Sale system which helps them keep up with the numbers of running the business and does a lot of data tracking for them and that has been a good tool.
The Vault is open from 4-8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings for dine-in or take out. ‘Taco Tuesday’ take out is available on Tuesday from 4-8 p.m. Ordering or reservations are available online at www.thevaultrestaurant.net or you can reach them by phone at 207-521-5040. They can also be found on Facebook at ‘The Vault Restaurant.’
